Not Dead Yet

48

Ten minutes later, Roy Grace stared at the blow-up of the photograph that had been texted through to Emma Reeves’s phone. It was a jagged piece of fabric, snagged on what appeared to be a branch of gorse.

‘Looks a pretty close match,’ Glenn Branson said, looking over his shoulder.

‘It’s the same pattern,’ Grace agreed.

‘This chap is absolutely certain it wasn’t there yesterday.’

Grace nodded, thinking hard. ‘Significant it appears the morning after you show it on Crimewatch? Could be that the perpetrator still had most of the suit – and possibly our missing body parts, and was panicked into disposing of them.’

‘That’s what I’m thinking.’

‘Okay, send one of our detectives down to the fishing club with the Crime Scene Manager, taking the piece of cloth we have, and see if the fabric matches. If it does, get the whole area sealed off as a crime scene and get a forensic strategy in place right away. We’ll need a land and water search. It sounds like a potential deposition site.’

Leaving Grace in his office to finish off some urgent paperwork on the Venner case, before heading to the security meeting on Gaia, Glenn hurried back to MIR-1. He despatched DC Emma Reeves, together with David Green, the Crime Scene Manager, to the angling club.

Then he sat at his workstation and began checking through the large number of other calls that had come in following his Crimewatch appearance. But there was nothing else of interest. A handful of the usual crank calls, and a couple from people who had called the Crimestoppers line anonymously to report suspicious neighbours. He delegated various members of his team to follow up each call, but at this moment, none seemed as positive as the one from a man called William Pitcher.

An hour later Emma Reeves phoned Glenn Branson in great excitement to tell him that the fabric did appear to be an exact match. Also she said there were fresh-looking tyre tracks that had not been made by the vehicle belonging to the angler who had made the call. Feeling a thrill of excitement, he appointed her as the temporary scene guard. Then he asked her for the directions, and told her he would be on his way in a few minutes.

He ended the call and looked around the Incident Room, wondering who else to take. He saw Bella Moy finishing a call and walked over to her. ‘Fancy a drive out into the countryside?’

She shrugged, and gave him a strange look, followed by a hesitant ‘Okay, yes.’ She grabbed a handful of Maltesers from the box on her desk and stood up.

She had been quiet during the early morning train journey back from Cardiff, and Glenn wondered whether he’d said something to upset her the previous night. She had appeared for breakfast wearing a top he had never seen before: although conservative it was far more modern than her usual style, and he wondered if it had been for his benefit.

Disappointingly, she seemed strangely subdued in the car now, updating him as he drove with the latest bulletin on her mother, who was not doing well in hospital. Every few minutes the TomTom, clipped to the top of the dashboard, interrupted their conversation, barking out the route.

For the final mile, Bella took over, reading aloud from the directions Emma Reeves had given them, then lapsing into her own thoughts. They headed down a narrow country lane, then turned left at a sign which read WEST SUSSEX PISCATORIAL SOCIETY, crossed a cattle grid, and drove down a steep, single-track road with tall hedgerows on either side.

‘Ever lived in the country?’ Glenn asked, trying to break the rather awkward silence that persisted between them. He wondered again, had he upset Bella in some way last night? He didn’t see how.

‘Doesn’t appeal,’ she said.

‘Nah, nor me. I’m a born townie. Too many inbred weirdos in the country, if you ask me.’

‘I grew up in the country,’ she said. ‘My parents were tenant farmers. They moved to Brighton when they retired.’

‘Ah,’ he said, trying to think of a way to recover from that. ‘Of course, I don’t mean everyone.’

She said nothing.

There was another sign to the angling club, pointing left, through an unfinished building development in a farmyard that looked as if it had been abandoned. There was a large, derelict-looking farmhouse, a half-finished barn conversion with a sign outside that read, DANGER, DO NOT ENTER, a grey breeze-block structure with no glass in the windows or doors, and a row of ancient, windowless flint cottages with a half-filled skip outside. Bags of sand and ballast lay around the area, along with a length of drainpipe and a large wooden reel of electrical cabling.

Ploughing through a muddy puddle just beyond, they saw a white Scientific Support Unit van. It was parked on concrete hard-standing alongside a large, navy-blue off-roader. A strip of blue and white crime scene tape was secured across a narrow entrance which had a sign fixed to a post, NO VEHICLES BEYOND THIS POINT.

Emma Reeves, a stern, good-looking blonde-haired DC, sensibly gowned up in a white oversuit, wellington boots and blue gloves, and holding a crime scene log, was acting as scene guard. Next to her stood Crime Scene Manager David Green, also gowned up, together with a smiling man in green waterproofs and waders, holding a fishing rod in a pose like a sentry.

Glenn hefted his Go-Bag out of the boot of the car, silently cursing that he had not come in boots; mud oozed over the tops of his immaculately polished loafers as he and Bella Moy approached them.

‘Sir,’ DC Reeves said, ‘this is William Pitcher who phoned in – he’s actually a retired paramedic’

Turning to him, Glenn said, ‘Thanks for your call. You’re sure this fabric wasn’t here yesterday?’

‘I’m certain – but I hope I haven’t brought you on a wild goose chase,’ William Pitcher said, looking at David Green, then Emma Reeves and then Glenn. ‘But that cloth was not here yesterday, I’m certain. I left here at nine last night, and I’ve checked the register, and no members of this club came after me, nor did anyone come this morning.’

Through dense woodland terrain beyond them, Branson saw the glint of water. He looked at Emma Reeves then the Crime Scene Manager. ‘Do you want us in oversuits?’

Green shook his head. ‘Not necessary – unless you want to go exploring?’ He looked dubiously down at Branson’s shoes. Bella more sensibly had gum boots on.

‘I just want to see the suit cloth.’

Green led him up to the snagged strip of fabric, being careful not to tread on any footprints or tyre marks. There was a gap in the hedgerow and trees through which Branson could see a wooden jetty and some decking. The lake was roughly an oval shape, overhung in parts by trees and bushes, and several wooden fishing platforms had been built around its shore. At the far end it narrowed to little wider than a river, then opened up beyond into what appeared to be another oval lake. It was an idyllic spot.

William Pitcher turned out to be extremely chatty, a mine of information about the club and its members. Glenn Branson had never considered that there might be a distinction between what defined a pond and a lake. Now, thanks to William Pitcher who enlightened him, he knew. Any body of inland water larger than half an acre was a lake. And what he was looking at was close to three and a half acres of prime trout water, although, Pitcher explained, it had a weed problem.

Weeds, it was shortly to turn out, were the least of this particular stretch of water’s problems.